Superchurches And How They Grew

By Richard N. Ostling

Protestantism in the U.S. has always been the domain of small, cozy congregations with 100 to 300 members; Catholic parishes are often large, but few Protestant churches have ever reached the 1,000-member point. Now, rapidly and dramatically, that pattern is changing with the rise of superchurches that boast mammoth memberships and facilities to match. Forty-three Protestant congregations in the U.S. claim 5,000 or more Sunday worshipers, says John N. Vaughan of Missouri's Southwest Baptist University in his Church Growth Today newsletter. Moreover, 116 congregations in 28 states say their attendance jumped by 300 or more in just one year. Such centralization is unprecedented.

The superchurch, a mall-size, high-profile house of worship, is the natural counterpart of the super-supermarket and the multiplex cinema. Brimming with self-confidence, these congregations -- many of them independent of established Protestant denominations -- have an increasing edge in the competitive marketplace of U.S. religion and an inexorable attraction for choosy consumers. Superchurches represent many denominational labels or no label, but nearly all are Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Charismatic or Pentecostalist, preaching a conservative theology.

And they are busy. So many people turn up at the Willow Creek Community Church northwest of Chicago, for example, that a traffic controller atop the building is needed to supervise the uniformed attendants who direct cars across the acres of asphalt. Befuddled visitors are greeted with information booths in the lobby. At Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, Calif., converts are so numerous that they are baptized in the Pacific Ocean, dozens at a time.

Bigger almost always means better, at least in certain ways. "Superchurches can offer a great youth program for all ages, with professionals in charge, and great music, with choirs and orchestras doing it the way it ought to be done," remarks Edward Plowman of National & International Religion Report, a newsletter in Springfield, Va. Plowman recently switched from a small denominational church to a bustling independent congregation with 2,000 members. At the 4,000-member Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif., the Rev. Lance Quinn says, "We have lots of things that might also be true of smaller churches. We just have them in megadoses."

Along with enthusiastic, often entertaining, worship, a major attraction is the churches' spiritual equivalent of one-stop shopping. They provide not only Sunday school but also long lists of elective courses for adults or specialized ministries, for instance for the hearing impaired or developmentally disabled. Groups can be targeted to Vietnamese immigrants, young divorces, 50-plus singles or compulsive eaters. "When you help people, your congregation grows," says Pastor Tommy Barnett of the mushrooming First Assembly of God in Phoenix. Barnett's church has programs for AIDS patients, the wheelchair users, transients and alcoholics.

Superchurches are unapologetic about passing the offering plate, and giant incomes make possible multimillion-dollar facilities that are another drawing card. The Texas-size Second Baptist Church of Houston, for instance, features a movie theater, weight rooms and saunas, a TV production center and outdoor and indoor gardens. The Family Life Center at Arizona's North Phoenix Baptist Church has its own gym, roller rink and racquetball courts.

Once a church reaches the critical mass of 1,000 members, sheer size alone enables it to lure more followers. But what is it that gets growth going in the first place? Not glitz, Vaughan insists, but "a biblical vision of reaching a city for Jesus," plus plenty of old-fashioned evangelistic toil and mass-media savvy. Geography also helps. Big-growth churches develop mostly in Sunbelt states or near limited-access highways in growing suburbs with zoning boards that are willing to foster expansion.

There are exceptions. The nine-year-old Metropolitan Assembly of God, located in a Do the Right Thing neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., goes all-out to recruit restless teenagers and has a 9,000-student Sunday school. While many of the fastest-growing congregations are young, First Baptist Church of Hammond, Ind., famous for its armada of Sunday-school buses, has been a Fundamentalist fixture for decades.

The impact of superchurches on dowdier and smaller congregations is not as threatening as doubters might expect. Christianity Today magazine discovered that neighboring pastors do not seem alarmed by their elephantine rivals. Small-church pastors praised the varied programs offered by nearby superchurches and said everyone got a boost when self-confident Christianity became more acceptable.

The most serious weakness of big churches is that they are inherently impersonal. Perhaps some recruits join precisely because they want to get lost in the crowd. But Vaughan thinks the key to long-term prosperity is steering as many members as possible into intimate groups such as Sunday-school classes or at-home Bible studies. Lawyer Larry Jones says he and wife Linda were initially "scared off" by Houston's Second Baptist, thinking it would be "some stale place that has no heartbeat." Instead they found all kinds of opportunities for close-knit fellowship and joined last December.

Critics also grumble that superchurch clergy, astride their self-contained empires, are often completely independent of effective oversight from denominations or locally elected boards. Lyle Schaller of the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Ind., who counsels congregations, notes that a superchurch is guaranteed future trouble if it is built largely around a single star preacher, who will be leaving someday.

The majority of Protestant congregations are not huge, expanding or glamorous, and tens of millions of U.S. believers are content with their more traditional and modest surroundings. Still, the superchurches have come to represent something new and powerful in most metropolitan areas. Calvary Chapel has even cloned itself, creating 370 daughter congregations across the U.S. Experts expect to see more of these Christian emporiums -- and a consequent permanent alteration in the ecology of American Protestantism.

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: John N. Vaughan, Church Growth Today newsletter, figures for 1989-90}]CAPTION: Biggest U.S. Protestant Congregations

With reporting by Minal Hajratwala/New York